7 tanks + racking - how to filter

[Luke]

I recently got an 8 tank stand with 7 tanks (all 8 spaces to be filled soon) and it came with lighting but no filtering, i have a bag of old filters and pumps but i don't know how good they are.
These tanks are not massive tanks, about the same size as you find in a pet shop and i was wondering if anyone has any ideas how to filter them all, would it be best to buy individual filters and pumps? Or one big pump and/or filter for them all?

I'm not planning to stock alot of fish or many big fish, a few platies, small swordtails etc and some plants for my larger tanks.

Any advice would be appreciated.

 

[Igor The Cat]

i would just use individual filters so then if there is a diease outbreak in one tank it wont spread to all of them.

cheers

-Java

 

[Luke]

Ah yes, i didn't think of that, maybe one pump with multiple outlets for air stones and individual filters?

 

[Igor The Cat]

yeah that sound good.

cheers

-Java

 

[hyunelan2]

If you're using UGFs on all of them, just get one large air pump and run hoses to all the necessary parts. Either that, or put a small HOB filter on each one. You could get some more complicated large-filter to make everything easy to clean, but like Igor said, then you run the risk of a disease outbreak spreading to each tank.

 

[homebunnyj]

What I've seen around here in small lfs's with healthy fish that I'm willing to buy from is individual hob's.

 

[Orion]

There are pro's and con's for each method. In the end it's going to be what ever you decide that you want to put up with. I've seen a HUGE central system in an LFS before filtering no less than 30 tanks per filter. And I've seen others that have either individual HOB's, or sponge filters or what ever.

With the central system, the setup takes a lot more thought and quite often money to get it going. However in the long run maintance can be minimum. With the individual filter setup is cheap (or sometimes not so cheap), easy to setup, but requires more maintance on a weekly basis. QT new fish before indroducing them to the central filter system and any diseases should be kept to a minimum.